INTRODUCTION

South Africa has many of the characteristics of a post-revolutionary society, and may also be classified as a post-conflict society. The struggle of the majority of South Africans for political liberation led to conflict between the armed wings of the liberation movements and the security forces of the apartheid state, and to acts of violence perpetrated on members of civil society. The same security forces were also involved in conflict with armed forces, primarily in Namibia and Angola, but also to a lesser degree in Mozambique, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Because the level of armed conflict on South African soil was extremely low, there are no obvious, physical signs of a conflict-torn country, as is the case in Mozambique and Angola. Nevertheless, the psychological scars of years of internal political conflict, though less visible, cannot be ignored. South Africa’s transition to democracy involved both victors and vanquished, albeit in political rather than military terms, but in contrast to the termination of conflict in other African countries, it has been difficult to draw a meaningful distinction between political and military aims and means in South Africa.

Peacebuilding may be defined as "[p]ost-conflict action to identify and support structures which will tend to strengthen and solidify a political settlement in order to avoid a return to conflict. It includes mechanisms to identify and support structures which will consolidate peace, advance a sense of confidence and well-being and support economic reconstruction, and may require military as well as civilian involvement."2

The military focus during peacebuilding missions is on demobilisation operations, which typically include:

securing agreement to the establishment and management of a cease-fire;

withdrawal and assembly of belligerents;

disarming of belligerents; and

the dispersal and rehabilitation of belligerents.

"The final stage of demobilization operations is the dispersal and rehabilitation of belligerents. This stage is principally the responsibility of the civil authority and therefore leads into the next category of operations (Military Assistance). It is at this stage that military and civil responsibilities will overlap and careful judgment will be required to time the transition from one authority to the other. It may be that the trust built up between the parties to the conflict and the peacekeeping force will argue for prolonging their involvement at this stage. At any rate, a transition of authority should only be made when it is judged to be safe. ... The planning and supervision of such reform might become the responsibility of a specified element of the peacekeeping force."3

The dispersal and rehabilitation of belligerents through reintegration into civil society is currently the primary focus of attention in the contemporary discourse on post-conflict military demobilisation. Most studies have focused on demobilisation and reintegration, with the issue of disarmament enjoying increasing (and much-deserved) attention. However, demobilisation also often involves "the reconstitution and reform of the civil authority’s police and defence forces which could well include former belligerents who might be re-armed, regrouped and placed under new authority."4 In other words, demobilisation comes to include a process of remobilisation, which hopefully goes beyond the fact of former belligerents donning similar uniforms and adopting a common standard of drill.

Just as those soldiers who are demobilised into civil society need to be demilitarised and taught socially useful skills, those that are remobilised into the military need to be taught militarily useful skills appropriate to a post-conflict society. In some cases, the former process enjoys the lion’s share of attention and resources. For example, in Mozambique, more than 100 000 soldiers have been demobilised into civil society, while only some 12 000 have been remobilised into the post-conflict military, with former soldiers outnumbering government forces by a ratio of 100 : 12. Obviously, the great challenge in that country is to create a situation where the demobilised individuals identify themselves as civilians rather than soldiers, or even as former soldiers.

In South Africa, however, only some 2 000 soldiers have so far been demobilised into a far more vibrant economy than that of Mozambique, while some 119 000 remain in full-time service of the reconstituted armed forces. While up to 40 0005 more soldiers may eventually join the ranks of the demobilised. There should obviously be a fundamental difference in the focus of concern: remobilisation poses a potentially greater challenge to the peacebuilding process than demobilisation. This is not to say that the latter process is insignificant. Thousands of former soldiers, if improperly integrated and disaffected, pose a formidable challenge to any society, but so does thousands of soldiers who enjoy a legal monopoly on arms, if they are not appropriately remobilised.

The aim of this article is to highlight a number of fundamental issues pertaining to both the demobilisation and remobilisation of South Africa’s armed forces, in order to illustrate the need for the development of a comprehensive framework for transforming the national defence force, while minimising the security risks associated with such a process.

OVERVIEW OF THE CONDUCT OF THE SOUTH AFRICAN DEMOBILISATION PROCESS

The demobilisation process in South Africa has been atypical when compared to similar processes in Africa. Despite the private and public submissions made by organisations such as the Institute for Defence Policy,6 the procedure commenced with the amalgamation of combatants from all the armed forces into a single defence force. It has been followed by a process of demobilising those persons considered to be superfluous, rather than directly demobilising those who do not wish to join the military on a permanent basis or who cannot be accommodated in the force.

Soon after the 1994 election, the formal assembly and amalgamation of the various armed forces in South Africa heralded the start of a single National Defence Force. The amalgamating forces were the more conventionally trained ‘statutory forces’ (the SADF and those of the Transkei, Bophuthatswana, Venda and Ciskei), and the guerrilla or ‘non-statutory’ forces of the ANC (MK) and the PAC (APLA). The process began with the submission by each force of a certified personnel register (CPR) by 27 April 1994, providing the basis of legal incorporation into the new national military. APLA only joined the negotiations towards their conclusion, and did not submit a certified list of their members in time. They were thus technically excluded from the SANDF in terms of the Transitional Executive Council Act (TEC). It was only by special presidential concession that their name list was eventually accepted. This has meant that the status of APLA is technically different to that of the rest of the integrating forces, a matter which is affecting the eligibility of former APLA for payment of severance packages at the time of writing. Since both MK and APLA were unconventional armed forces which operated covertly within an informal organisation and did not keep detailed personnel records, the whole concept of a certified personnel register was doomed to controversy. For example, many cadres had been included under their ‘battle’ names, and few had valid identity documents. The CPR subsequently went through a series of adjustments. With each adjustment the list grew, in the case of MK from 22 000 to 26 000 and eventually to 28 000 persons.7

The process of amalgamation differed from most other countries in one important respect. The Joint Military Co-ordinating Council (JMCC) decided on successive call-ups; there was to be no mass encampment or assembly of combatants in designated camps as a first step in the process of demobilisation. This resulted in the majority of former MK and APLA soldiers being called up to the assembly areas after having spent more than a year in South Africa, as part of broader society, and created an anomalous situation where former combatants were remilitarised with the prospect of shortly being demobilised.

While full-time members of the SADF, numbering approximately 90 000, automatically became members of the National Defence Force on 27 April 1994, the integration of the former TBVC armed forces also followed a different path to that of the non-statutory forces. On 1 September 1994 the full-time TBVC forces came under operational command of the SA Army. These forces numbered about 4 000 former Transkei Defence Force members, 1 300 from Venda, 4 000 from Bophuthatswana and about 2 000 from Ciskei.8

On 12 September 1995, Defence Minister Joe Modise stated that 15 007 MK members still had to be called up for integration. They would be called up in six intakes: on 25 September 1995, 13 November 1995, 8 January 1996, 1 May 1996, 5 August 1996 and 19 August 1996. He also stated that 1 900 of the 13 881 MK members who had reported, had completed their basic bridging training and were busy with either advance career training or had been assigned to posts in the SANDF. Furthermore, a total of 1 334 members had been lost to the SANDF due to recruitment by the police, joining the Service Corps, or death, desertions, discharges and resignations.9

By 11 March 1996 the status of the amalgamation process was as follows:10

This meant that 54 per cent of the CPR had been assembled of which 86,2 per cent were male and 13,8 per cent female. But on average only sixteen per cent of the total intakes were actually reporting by that stage, and it was estimated that only about 60-70 per cent of the total CPR would actually report. By this date ten MK and five APLA intakes had been completed. Only three intakes were still planned for 1996, with the last to occur during September. Various reasons were advanced for the poor reporting figure, ranging from a lack of interest to poor administration in the regions.

In contrast to the amalgamation process, which has been driven by the imperative of the larger settlement process, the demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants appear to have enjoyed a much lower priority. A cabinet memorandum detailing demobilisation guidelines stood over from the end of 1994, awaiting political approval. Eventually, the demobilisation of former non-statutory force members only was announced by Minister Modise on 21 August 1995. The process of demobilisation involves, among others, the provision of a demobilisation gratuity upon discharge. The size of the gratuity will depend on years of service in MK or APLA, and is divided into five groups:11

Group A (persons who had joined either MK or APLA during the period 1 January 1961 to 31 December 1972) - R42 058;



Group B (persons who had joined either MK or APLA during the period 1 January 1973 to 31 December 1976) - R34 313;



Group C (persons who had joined either MK or APLA during the period 1 January 1977 to 31 December 1982) - R28 721;



Group D (persons who had joined either MK or APLA during the period 1 January 1983 to 31 December 1989) - R20 201; and



Group E (persons who had joined either MK or APLA during the period 1 January 1990 to 26 March 1994) - R12 734

Within weeks after the announcement, the demobilisation of former members of MK and APLA who could not be integrated into the SANDF, and those who had not yet been called up to the assembly area or had not reported for integration when called up, was underway. During September 1995 the SANDF announced that those to be demobilised had an option to undergo counselling for a period of two weeks, should they so wish. Most members of the first group of 371 who were demobilised on 6/7 September 1995 rejected the offer of counselling. The counselling service attempted to advise the soldier to be demobilised on how to re-enter the formal and informal employment sector. It consisted of counselling on:

personal matters - which may include the adaptation to civilian society, learning communication



skills, as well as stress and conflict management;



careers, especially in occupational options;



social services such as legal advice, labour relations, health care, etc.; and



financial advice.12

Simultaneously with amalgamation, the defence force also adopted a flexible service system, with the aim of creating a full-time contingent of personnel which may be adapted to changing human resource needs "without drastic rationalisation actions or excessive costs."13 The flexible service system offers three systems of human resource provisioning: Short-Term Service (STS); Medium-Term Service (MTS); and Long-Term Service (LTS). Apart from members of the SANDF who were previously permanent members of the statutory forces and who have continued with uninterrupted service in the SANDF, it is envisaged that only members earmarked for senior command and staff positions will be employed on a LTS contract. This means that there should be a constant turnover of personnel at junior to middle-rank levels within the officer corps, and an even higher turnover of personnel within the enlisted ranks. With each service contract which is not renewed, the SANDF will have produced a trained, but redundant soldier who will need to be reintegrated into civil society. If the redundant soldier is to have a reasonable chance of reintegrating into society, military training and education should not only impart combat-related knowledge, skills and attitudes, but also some which may be readily transferred to the civilian realm, and which are recognised as such by civilian employers.

This imperative may be addressed by the certification of existing military courses, or the planning and conduct of transitional or preparatory courses. While the Service Corps (discussed later) may address some of the needs of the lower enlisted ranks in the latter arena, there should also be planning for the reintegration of redundant soldiers of higher rank and expertise; of soldiers who have reached such levels of military skill, knowledge and salary that their future civilian career aspirations cannot be addressed by an institution such as the Service Corps. The process thus far raises a number of issues relating to the concept of demobilisation, remobilisation and reintegration of soldiers in South Africa.

DEMOBILISATION ISSUES

STEREOTYPICAL THINKING ON DEMOBEES

The contemporary discourse on post-conflict demobilisation of former combatants seems to be guided by an image of the latter as uneducated individuals with few social graces and fewer skills of economic utility in the post-conflict environment. If not subjected to a process of education, training, and resocialisation, such people are bound to revert to their skill at arms in order to subsist in an ‘alien’, civilian environment through armed banditry or violent criminality. Such behaviour could menace the post-conflict society, and create a real threat to the consolidation of peace. Implicit to this type of thinking is a concern for the potential impact of demobilised soldiers on civil society, rather than a genuine concern for the welfare of those who have fought for a cause. Moreover, it ignores the fact that civil society is not necessarily an alien environment for former combatants.

Demobilisation and reintegration programmes (DRPs14), based on the above image of demobees, have recently been initiated in a number of African states, often with external funding and assistance. For example, there are DRPs in progress in Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somaliland, Uganda and Mozambique. They vary in the number of former combatants to be demobilised and reintegrated (500 000 in Ethiopia versus 30 000 in Uganda), as well as in the nature of post-conflict society (war-ravaged Mozambique versus relatively-intact Ugandan society). However, in most of the DRPs in progress, the stereotypical image of former combatants is fairly accurate: demobees are being assisted with reintegration through programmes designed to impart basic skills which will enable former combatants to survive in a non-military environment. Because the objective living conditions of the civilian population are very poor, the expectations of former combatants are relatively low, and the creation of the ability to subsist is often regarded as a successful outcome of reintegration programmes.

The profile of former combatants in South Africa is infinitely more complex. There are a large number of officers, as well as non-commissioned officers and troops who face military redundancy. Some have been trained as guerrillas, while others have been conventionally trained. Those who have completed the integration process would have been subjected to both guerrilla and conventional training. Levels of education range from little formal education to post-graduate qualifications. The majority of former members of the non-statutory forces supported and contributed to the electoral victory of the ruling political elite. Many members of the statutory forces fought for many years to prevent or delay such a victory.

Guerrilla forces operate per definition among civilian populations, and are not isolated from broader social influences. Although theoretically more isolated from society, conventional forces which display strong occupational tendencies (such as the former SADF) also reflect society far more than the stereotype of the ‘heroic warrior’ would suggest. With a five division staff system which includes personnel, logistics and finance functions, many erstwhile statutory force members have occupational skills akin to those of their civilian counterparts. In fact, being ‘civilian’ is a rather normal state for most people, including soldiers. The intensive process of military socialisation during the basic training of recruits attests to this fact. Soldiers also have wives and families who are generally civilians, whom soldiers relate to frequently and intimately when not deployed on operations. Even after the traumatically destructive combat of the Second World War, no country found it necessary to run structured programmes for reintegrating demobilised soldiers into civil society. Peace was considered to be a normal and desirable condition to which conscripts would readily adapt.

The above generalisations are not intended to generate a new, fallacious stereotype of the demobilised soldier as one who slips effortlessly into civilian roles and occupations. After all, the maladjustment of many US veterans of the war in Vietnam has been well documented and perhaps even glorified through the medium of cinematography. The intention is to illustrate that different people will experience the process of demobilisation in different ways. Some will adjust readily to civilian life, while others may experience difficulty in coping with a severed umbilical from the military environment, with its paternalistic remuneration system and emphasis on esprit de corps. What is needed is an evaluation of both individuals and groups of soldiers when it comes to demobilisation and reintegration. For some, the personal challenge of demobilisation may be mainly financial, for others mainly psychological, while others may find military redundancy to be both a psychologically and financially traumatic experience.

There is also the matter of South Africa’s part-time military forces, which has hitherto largely escaped the thinking and debate on demobilisation. The very nature of militia service, where soldiers are primarily citizens who serve for short periods under arms, implies that there should be few problems with reintegration into civil society. The problem is rather one of continuous military resocialisation when called to military duty. However, the prospect of full or partial demobilisation, or disbandment of such forces should enjoy more attention in the post-conflict defence debate, and form part of a comprehensive DRP.

South Africa’s militia, or part-time forces, are a product of the era of male, whites-only conscription which prevailed for 26 years, from January 1968 to January 1994. Apart from the initial period of full-time service which varied from nine months to two years, this system of conscription guaranteed approximately 120 000 Citizen Force members (the bulk of South Africa’s conventional strike power), 130 000 Commandos (for area protection), and a reserve of 180 000 (which could be mobilised to strengthen either the full-time force, the Citizen Force or the Commandos).15 The Government of National Unity therefore inherited not only full-time military forces with a potential post-integration strength of approximately 136 000, but also an almost exclusively white male militia numbering nearly four times that of the fledgling full-time national defence force. Yet, there has been no programme announced so far for the disarmament and ‘demobilisation’ (official disbandment of regiments and units) of this militia, nor for the remobilisation of a militia, which is appropriate to a post-conflict South Africa. As Sass has observed, "[t]he Government of National Unity has accepted a policy of volunteers, non-racialism, affirmative action, gender equality and non-discrimination for the SANDF. These principles still have to be applied to the organising, recruiting, training and structuring of the part-time forces."16

The South African experiment with demobilisation, rationalisation and reintegration is likely to have few parallels with those conducted by either developed countries, or similar processes in Africa, simply because South Africa is neither a developed country nor a typical African state. Unlike most African countries which have experienced the process of demobilisation, the bulk of South Africa’s soldiers have been recruited from urban environments. This means that they cannot be readily (re)integrated into a rural, agricultural environment, as is happening with redundant soldiers at relatively low cost, with greater or lesser degrees of success, in other African countries. Nor does South Africa have the capacity of some developed countries to absorb redundant soldiers into the urban labour market. With more than five million people officially unemployed, there is little sympathy in South Africa for the plight of the additional several thousand redundant military veterans. The complexity of DRP in South Africa, however, is compounded by inadequate and inconsistent policy decisions.

INCONGRUENT DEMOBILISATION/ RATIONALISATION POLICY

Even restricting the demobilisation issue to full-time members, or those constitutionally entitled to be such, it is apparent that this aspect has not been addressed within a comprehensive and consistent DRP framework. There has been a reliance on vague and unproved concepts such as ‘natural attrition’, ‘voluntary demobilisation’ and ‘re-entry’ for maintaining civil supremacy over an appropriately structured military in South Africa, while at the same time looking after the physical and psychological needs of redundant former combatants, and those of the communities which the latter are expected to re-enter.

Natural personnel attrition (through resignation, retirement, death, disability, or administrative discharge) is a common feature of contemporary armed forces, and should normally pose no direct threat to civil society. Rationalisation, on the other hand, may create security problems if substantial numbers of combat-trained individuals are severed from the military without being reintegrated into civil society and the economy. Furthermore, rationalisation may create problems of civilian control if the process is perceived by residual elements of the forces as unjust and inequitable. Feelings of solidarity with retrenched comrades and a psychosis of "who’s next?" are the type of sentiments which historically have led to corporate coups. The arbitrary transfer of supernumerary personnel to other state departments within or outside the security community, as an alternative or supplement to rationalisation, may likewise lend impetus to corporate resentment and in any case in South Africa the labour unions and personnel associations of the Public Service are hardly likely to support this in a period where the Public Service also faces personnel cuts.

The voluntary demobilisation of redundant soldiers, at first glance, seems to be a less controversial process of force transformation. However, there are inherent inconsistencies in a policy that applies to former members of the non-statutory forces, but not to those of the SADF or the TBVC forces. The SANDF is supposed to be an all-volunteer force, but members of the former statutory forces who enlisted before 27 April 1994 did not volunteer for service in the SANDF. They were constitutionally conscripted into the new defence force, without the option of voluntary demobilisation. Not that the voluntary demobilisation package on offer to the veterans of the armed struggle is a panacea for re-integration into civilian society. Indeed, the one-off maximum payment of R42 000 being accepted by the most senior veterans has been described by a general officer as "enough money for them to buy a house in a location".

By 6 November 1995, 1 567 soldiers had accepted demobilisation packages ranging from R12 000 to R42 000, allocated according to date of enlistment. It has been estimated that a total of some 10 000 former combatants may eventually opt for voluntary demobilisation. These are "members of the former non-statutory forces (NSF), who are constitutionally part of the SANDF, but who do not wish to serve in the full-time force (FTF) or who are unable to do so for reasons of age, ill-health or who are unable to meet the minimum requirements for service in the SANDF."17 Statutory force members and former NSF members who have entered into employment contracts with the SANDF do not qualify for the option of voluntary demobilisation.18 Those NSF members who failed to respond to the various call-up instructions, or who reported at a date later than 21 August 1995 - the date when the demobilisation option was announced - may qualify for a lump-sum payment. However, the bulk of the NSF members who responded to the call-up for the large, initial intakes and who subjected themselves to two years of SANDF training, would have to await rationalisation measures.

The process of rationalisation will also not be without inconsistencies or controversy. It is due to be announced around the middle of 1996, before the completion of the comprehensive Defence Review being conducted by the Ministry of Defence to determine the size and posture of the future SANDF. This means that whatever criteria are used to determine personnel redundancy, they may be perceived as somewhat arbitrary. Moreover, the majority of former non-statutory force members who joined the SANDF through the integration programme, were inducted under the STS, and would be more vulnerable than other soldiers to declared redundancy through the simple non-renewal of service contracts. Given the political imperative to establish a balanced and representative force, this factor may create a major headache. Whatever severance benefits are provided to NSF members may be calculated according to the number of years of service with the SANDF, without credit for years service in the NSF. The same is not true for statutory force members, whose years of service in the SANDF or TBVC armies have automatically been converted to years of SANDF service.

The scale of retrenchment due to rationalisation is likely to be far greater than that of demobilisation. Defence planners have provided no conceptual definition of either demobilisation or rationalisation. The difference seems to be that demobilisation applies to former members of non-statutory forces, while rationalisation applies to the whole SANDF. Such a distinction appears to be arbitrary in nature. In conventional usage, the term demobilisation describes a process of reducing the number of people under arms in the wake of the termination of military hostilities (for example, the demobilisation of Allied and Axis forces upon termination of the Second World War). Rationalisation implies a more gradual, better planned process of down-sizing defence forces because of a perceived decline in the threat and/or because of budgetary restrictions (such as the down-sizing of NATO and former Warsaw Pact armies since 1989, in the wake of the termination of the Cold War). In South Africa, both conditions prevail. There has been a reduction of the perceived military threat that South Africa would be required to counter, and this provides a logical rationale for rationalising the number of men and women under arms. Military hostilities have also been terminated, not only between some of the former non-statutory forces and the former SADF, but also between the former SADF and the armed forces of a number of neighbouring states.

One consequence of the above anomalies is that, in the South African context, the greatest challenge of reintegrating redundant soldiers into civil society will be precipitated by the process of rationalisation, rather than by that termed demobilisation. The transformation of national defence in South Africa thus involves interactive processes of amalgamation, demobilisation, rationalisation, remobilisation and reintegration. In the context of the concept of a DRP as expounded in this article, demobilisation thus also embraces the processes of amalgamation and rationalisation.

PRIVATISED DEMOBILISATION

The term ‘privatised demobilisation’ is coined to refer to the post-conflict voluntary resignation of large numbers of military personnel, who may also be in need of assistance with reintegration into civil society. Over a two-year period, the SANDF personnel strength has already decreased by more than 12 000 as a result of non-renewal of contracts, as well as by ‘natural’ attrition. This is a larger figure than the projected number of soldiers who may ultimately opt for demobilisation. Moreover, during the period August 1995 to February 1996, 1 485 members left the force through normal attrition, "with a resultant loss of experience and expertise."19 This number is some 300 short of the total number of personnel demobilised in a similar period of time, between August 1995 and March 1996. While little can be done about ageing and ailing soldiers, the resignation phenomenon indicates a process of privatised demobilisation.

It cannot be assumed that all who resign, do so because they have been offered secure and higher remuneration than the military can provide. Even if this were so, the mere fact of civilian employment does not necessarily imply reintegration as a moral citizen. However, little has been done by the SANDF to ascertain individual reasons for deserting a career in the military. Some have undoubtedly resigned due to the protracted uncertainty created by a prolonged defence review and consequent delays in the announcement of rationalisation criteria. Other resignations, particularly of former SADF members, may be precipitated by an inability to adapt to the racial integration of the military and black domination of political control over defence. The point is that a number of potential Kaalvoet Thysies may be slipping the yoke of military control through the circumstantially induced and uncontrolled resignation of skilled personnel.

Even where resignations are financially motivated, the employment accepted by former soldiers can create a future threat. Executive Outcomes, through offers of high financial rewards, has attracted a large number of highly skilled combat veterans, who have been accused of acting as mercenaries. But there is also a less publicised flow of highly proficient former soldiers to private security companies. Some of the former officers that fought the hardest to sustain white political supremacy in South Africa (many of them former special forces operators) are now regional managers of security companies, not only in countries such as Angola, but also in such volatile parts of South Africa as KwaZulu-Natal. Others will be relegated to a role akin to that of an infantry company commander for the rest of their careers in private security. The resulting career frustration combines with command over armed personnel to create a potential security problem in a country which now boasts far more private security guards than the SANDF has full-time soldiers.20 The latter raises a peripheral concern as to whether or not the provision of security to the citizenry should be privatised, and what the fundamental role of the state should be.

The loss of essential military skills makes privatisation not only a reintegration problem, but also one of remobilising a cohesive and combat-effective force on a shrinking defence budget. For example, some 130 pilots, or a third of the total complement, have left the SA Air Force since the beginning of 1995. According to SAAF sources, it costs R18 726 091 to train one pilot up to fighter standard, and nearly R84 million for a ‘top gun’ Mirage pilot.21 At a conservative average training cost of R10 million per pilot, the replacement of these skills lost through resignation would cost R1,3 billion, or ten times the amount requested from cabinet by the SANDF to fund the first year of vocational training for 3 500 demobilised soldiers.22

Ironically, those with enough knowledge, skills and initiative to find civilian employment are regarded by the military as too competent to be considered for early retirement or a retrenchment package, yet no effort is made to dissuade them from resigning by addressing their grievances concerning current inconsistencies in the conditions of military service. While some excellent soldiers are quitting the service, many less venturesome, but equally disaffected former members of the SADF bide their time in the unenthusiastic fulfilment of their duties, while calculating the benefits which will accrue to them should they receive the much hoped-for package, the financial crutch which they hope would enable them to make some sort of transition to civilian life. This, in turn, raises questions of whether or not such people are suited for remobilisation, or the perpetuation of a career in the post-conflict military.

SIMPLISTIC VIEW OF REINTEGRATION

South African defence planners seem to have a simplistic view of reintegrating former combatants into civil society. This can probably be ascribed to the issue of stereotypical thinking on demobees, as outlined above. The whole issue of reintegration seems to have been reduced to the need to establish a service brigade aimed at providing both relevant skills and a gateway to employment for the country’s redundant soldiers.

The concept of a Service Corps (initially a Service Brigade) was mentioned by the Chief of the then SADF, General Meiring at an IDP conference in Pretoria on 15 November 1993: " ... there are a large number of individuals who have received military training of some sort and who will not be accommodated in the South African Army. To leave these individuals jobless in the streets is to invite trouble. An idea is to establish a Services Brigade to accommodate and train them. This Brigade could be used on non-military tasks, like building projects. After a period of service in the Brigade they can leave the Brigade and make a decent living for themselves in the private sector."23 The idea was also propagated that the military, through such a scheme, would be able to "... train large numbers of people every year in this way ..." and "... be used to help eradicate the vast backlog in the building of houses, schools, roads, etc. ... on a regional, national or even international level in addressing the socio-economic problems of the Southern African region."24

Cabinet approval for the establishment of the Service Corps was granted on 18 January 1995, and it was launched by the Minister of Defence on 31 January 1995 at 1 Construction Regiment in Dunottar. According to the Annual Report of the National Defence Force for the financial year 1994/95, the role of the Service Corps is "... to train volunteers and/or rationalised members of the NDF in a variety of practical skills in order to equip them for civilian life or to provide selected members with a career in the Supporting Services of the NDF." The mission of the Corps is "... to upgrade the standard of education, vocational and life skills of former NDF personnel to enable them to find employment or to start their own enterprise in the private sector. The scope of the Service Corps can be extended to include the youth and unemployed."25

Entry into the Corps is voluntary. After eighteen months, members will be obliged to leave the Corps, but are also free to leave at any time during that period should an employment opportunity arise. The eighteen months are divided into three months literacy and life skills training, three months vocational training, and twelve months of practical experience. Service Corps trainees receive an allowance of R28-00 per day. While the SANDF has provided the Corps with an initial start-up budget to establish a limited framework, the Corps is looking to the government’s Reconstruction and Development Programme (RDP) for further funding. By mid-1995 the Corps was planning a total 1995 intake of 1 800 personnel, while it had an estimated capacity for 5 500 persons. Planning for the next annual intake was based on a projected number of 6 900, while the total capacity of the Corps is said to be 10 000 trainees. However, of the planned 1995 intake of 1 800 persons, only 318 trainees had joined the Corps by the end of September 1995, with an estimated additional 800 potential members still at the Wallmansthal Assembly area.26 R158 million has been earmarked to provide vocational training for 886 former members of MK and APLA in the Service Corps during 1996, which represents a cost of more than R178 000 per individual.27 Aside from the very high costs associated with the Service Corps, a further problem is that the Corps does not appear to have done research to identify the individual needs and aspirations of the demobilised. Although this may prove more time consuming than the general blanket approach, it would assist in providing individual treatment for each demobilised soldier.28 A meaningful reintegration programme would also require information about:

the families of those to be demobilised;

the circumstances in the areas where former combatants will reside after demobilisation;

the attitude of the people in these areas;

criteria according to which successful reintegration into civil society could be judged;

mechanisms whereby a demobilised soldier could obtain ongoing assistance and advice;

the social effects of demobilisation on the demobilised soldier and on society at large; and

employment opportunities, the training needs of and opportunities for demobees.29

If there is no reasonable guarantee of employment upon completion of Service Corps training, for example, the current programme would spend eighteen months creating redundant bricklayers and plumbers out of redundant soldiers. There are sufficient skilled and experienced artisans in the ranks of the unemployed to create formidable opposition in the search for available jobs. If unable to meet his own needs and those of his immediate family, an unemployed veteran of many years military service is likely to revert to the best-learned skills to ensure survival: skill at arms.

Perhaps the most disturbing factor is that the Service Corps, a military organisation, is embarking on its own on an obviously civilian mission: the reintegration of former combatants into civil society. At best, it is tackling the task of reintegration on its own terms. Comparative research indicates that the reverse is required, and that NGOs could perform the same function at a fraction of the cost. For example, an examination of the experiences with regard to social reintegration in countries such as Uganda, Mozambique, Namibia, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Zimbabwe indicates that external agencies can play a meaningful role. This includes research organisations at educational institutions who identify the exact requirements of the demobilised, capacity-building organisations, and funding agencies. These organisations have complemented, but not usurped the role of government in the reintegration process. It seems that in South Africa the military is attempting to go it alone.30

The Service Corps has been struggling to achieve national accreditation for the education and training it will provide. The matter has been complicated and delayed by the parallel transformation of the national educational system and a national qualification framework which itself has run into serious delays.31 But even this approach is too narrow. Beyond the realm of the untested Service Corps, there should be a thorough evaluation of all military education and training, with a view to grant a maximum degree of civilian accreditation. In the realm of military training, this may mean a greater degree of civilian oversight, which should not be resisted by the military, for it could contribute significantly to the reintegration of redundant personnel. Indeed, the African National Congress has stated that "[t]he skills that workers already have will be recognized throughout the country. All training programmes will be nationally recognized so that workers can move between companies and not only be able to advance in their own companies."32 This type of policy guideline could easily be extended to accommodate the recognition of those military skills which are relevant to jobs in the civilian economy. For example, civilian recognition could be granted for military skills related to fields as diverse as aviation, vehicular transport, catering, security, finances, logistics, communications, demolitions, engineering, training, teaching and management.

A Steering Group on Societal Influences in the Military Organization, commissioned in 1972 by the Dutch secretary of defence, went so far as suggesting that "ex-soldiers should receive preferential treatment on the civilian labour-market, and that technical skills acquired in the armed forces should be placed on the same level as those acquired outside them."33 In a country which recognises and accepts the need to implement affirmative action in order to promote the process of democratisation, the beneficiaries of such a programme could be defined to include veterans of the armed forces. In South Africa, for example, Section 8(3)(a) of the Interim Constitution of 1993 determines that the principle of equality of all citizens "shall not preclude measures designed to achieve the adequate protection and advancement of persons or groups or categories of persons disadvantaged by unfair discrimination, in order to enable their full and equal enjoyment of all rights and freedoms." While this provision was intended to cater primarily for the application of affirmative action to both women and non-white victims of the apartheid policy, it should be possible to extend the concept to include ‘victims’ of an ascriptive and discriminatory conscription system. All soldiers, in fact, are treated in a discriminatory fashion due to the nature of military service, and in so far as the military do not equip them with socially useful skills with which to secure gainful employment in the civilian sector.

REMOBILISATION ISSUES

THE NUMBERS GAME

Thus far, it has been more or less universally accepted that, despite the absence of any threat of hostile conventional military operations, South Africa will need to maintain a military institution capable of defending the nation should such a threat one day materialise. Apart from the symbolic value of a national force as a tangible sign of independence and sovereignty, the vast majority of states in the international system would concur with the need for such insurance. The debate on post-conflict defensive restructuring in South Africa therefore begins with the acceptance of a national military force as a fact of life, and proceeds with a deliberation of how many soldiers, units and formations would be appropriate and affordable. The latter obviously depends upon what such soldiers and their equipment will or may be used for. However, there is a reasonable degree of consensus on the primary and secondary roles of the SANDF. There is also a reluctant acceptance by the military establishment that the Government will continue to afford a much higher priority to spending on socio-economic upliftment of the citizenry, than it will to pleas for the acquisition of new tools of destruction. The debate is thus largely a game of numbers: how many men and women would be adequate to fulfil the constitutional roles of the SANDF?

In a post-conflict society, answers to the above question are as likely to be motivated by political and corporate military interests as they are by the logic of defence needs. This should not be seen as a negative observation, for conflict in South Africa has and will continue to be of a political rather than a military nature. The objective should be to create a military which will remain subservient to its political masters, to the will of the people as expressed through their democratically elected representatives in the legislature; a military which is comfortable with the fact that the essence of democratic politics is the existence of conflict between individuals and groups, and the resolution of such conflict through non-coercive means. This implies that a comprehensive DRP would have to transcend the numbers game and focus on the fundamental, qualitative, and political issues pertaining to the remobilisation of armed forces under a new political dispensation.

Such a framework should include issues such as recruitment and military socialisation, ethnic and racial representivity, problems of internal cohesion and external adaptation, the accommodation of fundamental military interests, and a programme for reintegrating ‘supernumeraries’ into civil society.

RECRUITING

If South Africa is to establish and maintain a combat effective military force that is also capable of fulfilling its secondary roles, demobilisation and rationalisation must be complemented by a well-planned recruitment strategy. The nature of military service, especially in combat musterings, dictates that there must be a constant renewal of personnel, so that a healthy balance between experienced but ageing warriors, and younger, fitter and more enthusiastic ‘rookies’ can be maintained. While the twin processes of force maintenance and force renewal are common to all effective armed forces, the SANDF will have to cope with more complex recruitment criteria than simply calling on the nation’s finest and fittest young adults to serve in the military, as recruiting must take place amidst a process of structural and role realignment.

Structural and role realignment within the military of any society will generate needs for active recruiting of personnel with appropriate backgrounds and skills, the institutional socialisation of newcomers and the resocialisation of existing incumbents. Both recruitment policy and institutional socialisation can be utilised to foster military disengagement from politics and to ameliorate intra-military tensions. Intense socialisation that reinforces traditional military values within integral boundaries may result in the military becoming a separate social estate, with minimal psychological support for the political system as a whole, and thus not readily amenable to civilian control. This is why governments of plural societies usually attempt to counteract professional socialisation by recruiting members to the military on the basis of values shared with the governing elite. The latter strategy, however, inevitably leads to subjective control, and generates the type of civil-military tensions that arise where the professional autonomy of the military is threatened. According to Welch, this problem could be solved through the adoption of a system of universalistic recruitment which is supplemented by socialisation in military values.34

Ideally, the opportunity for participation in the armed forces of a state should be available to all citizens. However, the high costs and uncertain consequences of universal, mandatory military service do not make it a viable option in many developing countries which are not confronted with a clear military threat to the state. South Africa is no exception in this regard. Enloe has suggested that politically, the least costly human resource strategy for the military in multi-ethnic countries is one that relies on voluntary enlistments from groups who are either so motivated by the war’s cause, or so in need of a job, that they will enlist without the threat of sanctions. Such a system has two potential advantages: it creates a military force that is presumably composed of self-motivated men and women, and it increases the likelihood that those who obtain combat training will be least inclined to use such skills against the government itself.35

While recruiting based on market forces may have a certain intuitive appeal, especially where there is a strong desire to depoliticise the pattern of manpower acquisition and retention in the armed forces and to alleviate problems of unemployment, military recruitment cannot be based entirely on civilian personnel practices. Soldiers enlisting on the basis of civilian-style recruiting appeals are not likely to display many of the qualities stressed in the process of institutional socialisation in the military, thereby exacerbating problems of military integration. Furthermore, market-place oriented recruiting appeals encourage the entrance into the military of persons whose involvement in the organisation will be calculative, rather than moral.

There are essentially three types of power that can be used to bring about compliance: coercive, remunerative, and normative. Coercive power is based on the actual or threatened application of physical sanctions; remunerative power rests on the manipulation of material resources and rewards; normative power is based on the allocation and manipulation of symbolic or emotional rewards and deprivations. The type of power used should be related to the involvement of the individual from whom compliance is required. The types of involvement vary according to the orientation of the participants. Alienative involvement designates an intensely negative orientation; calculative involvement designates either a negative or positive involvement of low intensity; moral involvement designates a positive orientation of high intensity. When combined, the elements of power and involvement constitute a power relationship. As illustrated below, of the nine possible relationships created by matching means of control with types of involvement, only three are congruent, or consistent, in that the kind of involvement of the lower participants and the kind of involvement that tends to be generated by the predominant form of organisational power are the same.

Historically, all three types of power have been predominant in military organisations. For example, the 17th Century mercenary armies of Renaissance Italy achieved compliance of subordinates primarily through the application of normative power. The British armies of the 18th Century depended on coercion for recruitment and compliance with orders. The ideal military in a democracy would rely primarily on normative power, but in reality most armies rely on a mixture of all three types of power: for example, there is a disciplinary code, soldiers receive a salary, and medals are awarded. The essential human resource issue, then, is to achieve and maintain a dynamic balance in military compliance relationships amid the great flux of a society which is being transformed from hegemonic to popular rule.

A certain level of moral involvement is required from soldiers in any contemporary military which is to be combat effective. Despite the technologically advanced nature of modern warfare, there should be no fundamental change in the commitment made by a person who elects to enter military service. Like his or her historical counterpart, the soldier must undertake, if necessary, to endure hardship and risk his life in the service of a cause. The soldier’s recompense must necessarily be mainly psychological: he or she is offered a cause, and membership of a highly structured sector of society devoted to that cause. This is a contract which includes elements of concepts such as patriotism, loyalty, comradeship, tradition, esprit de corps, and discipline.36 These aspects should therefore be stressed in recruiting appeals, so that the normative power exercised by society, through the military hierarchy, is not foreign to the value-system of the soldiery. Where policy makers fear that altruistic recruiting appeals would fail to attract the minimum number of recruits required by the armed forces, recruiting efforts should at least emphasise those aspects of military service which, though perhaps enjoyable, cannot be found in most civilian occupations: adventure, excitement, opportunities for travel, etc.

To avoid the creation of armed forces that are characterised by dissatisfaction among a significant portion of personnel, recruiting appeals should be based on a realistic image of the military organisation. However, where a military organisation decides that its public image is at marked variance and recruitment disadvantage with optimal recruitment potential and/or with the realities of military service, it may seek ways to publicise an image which corresponds more closely to organisational characteristics desirable to potential recruits. Because most military organisations are complex and therefore offer a variety of specific careers, different images which would appeal to different personality profiles may be directed to different recruiting pools.37

There is, however, a potential danger when recruiting appeals amount to promises that are not met in subsequent military service. Newly-inducted members of organisations have a complex set of expectations about themselves, the organisation, their role, and anticipated responsibilities, privileges, and satisfactions within it. The failure of an organisation to satisfy these expectations, or to systematically modify the expectations of trainees so as to make them more congruent to organisational realities, will have an adverse effect on organisational performance and cohesion.38 In the military, this type of dissonance may also lead to increasing pressures for unionisation, or combine with other psychological characteristics to form a motive for military intervention in politics in order to satisfy frustrated expectations. The challenge facing the military recruiter is therefore one of developing a truthful package, and offering that package to the right customer.

The recruitment patterns must also be directed towards the objective of creating a representative defence force. The White Paper on National Defence states that, "[i]n order to secure the legitimacy of the armed forces, the DoD (Department of Defence) is committed to the goal of overcoming the legacy of racial and gender discrimination. It will ensure that the SANDF and its leadership in particular, is broadly representative of the South African population."39 Although the White Paper makes no mention of time-frames for the achievement of this goal, conventional wisdom indicates that it will be many years before the SANDF is broadly representative at all levels of the military hierarchy. In fact, as long as the bulk of the soldiery continue to do soldierly things (training and preparation for armed combat), it is doubtful whether the goal of gender representivity will ever be achieved, unless the DoD succeeds in totally redefining the nature of military service, or the process of pre-adolescent and adolescent socialisation of South Africa’s majority female population changes drastically over the next few years. Racial and ethnic representivity, however, is not only a realistic goal, but also an imperative for sustaining peace and consolidating democracy in the country.

RACIAL AND ETHNIC REPRESENTIVITY

Because the military is among the most visible state institutions, its composition can provide vital clues to the citizenry as to exactly whom the state means to represent and protect and just whom the state considers threatening or untrustworthy.40 With specific reference to ethnicity, Enloe is of the opinion that it not only shapes the nature of the army, but that the ethnic image and reality of the army may determine how various social groups relate to each other and to the central government. Societies which embark upon an interdependent process of nationbuilding and democratisation may therefore be faced with challenges in their quest for civil supremacy that will point towards seemingly contradictory strategies of ethnic adaptation with regard to their military forces.41

The necessity of achieving a high degree of ethnic balance in the armed forces of a society committed to the processes of nationbuilding is fairly obvious, but in practice this ideal has often been subordinated to the practicalities of securing regime hegemony. In Africa, for example, most post-independence rulers were aware of the tenuous nature of national unity, and were anxious to dilute ethnic tensions and develop political institutions which would integrate rather than fragment significant social groupings. On the other hand, they were also acutely conscious of the need to ensure the political reliability of soldiers who were primarily a state instrument for maintaining domestic order in a time of great uncertainty and raised political expectations. The post-independence armies thus had a potential role to play in the achievement of two essentially contradictory goals: securing regime hegemony and bridging social divisions. The post-independence African regimes employed the simplest basis for predicting the reliability of the soldiery: communal identity with the regime.42 In so doing, the former goal was pursued at the expense of the latter, at least as far as the military was concerned.

Welch and Smith have suggested that "the likelihood of military intervention diminishes if officers are drawn from or incorporated into the same social strata as the governing elite, and rises if the two groups are drawn from different strata."43 This proposition may be generalised to include ethnic, as well as social groupings. There is, however, an inherent danger involved in adopting such an approach in a new nation with a high potential for internal conflict which may necessitate the internal deployment of troops to restore or maintain stability. Under such circumstances, attempts to establish and maintain civilian control could turn quite sour if they include reliance on such ethnic symmetry between regime and armed forces that the military loses its legitimacy as a truly national institution and thus generates hostility among the very communal groups it is supposed to pacify.44

When an armed force, which is deliberately ethnically skewed in order to enhance regime security and perpetuate unequal divisions of power among ethnic groups, is sent into an ethnic conflict, it will be viewed by neither the central elite nor the communal dissidents as merely a neutral actor. It will rather be regarded as a reflection of the ethnic-political stratification on which the state rests. Like income and influence, security is normally unequally distributed in multi-ethnic societies. When such societies are afflicted with ethnic hostilities that lead to police and military action, the latter will be regarded as participants with a stake in the outcome, rather than the neutral instruments of a super-ethnic state authority. Ethnic groups which are underrepresented in state security forces perceive such imbalances as a reflection of their overall political vulnerability.45

Most ethnic imbalances in security forces are a result of deliberate policy design, and in most developing countries ethnic balance is the exception rather than the rule. Ethnically, four general types of military organisation have been identified by Enloe:46

Mono-ethnic: The military is dominated by a single ethnic group throughout the organisational hierarchy to the exclusion of all outsiders.



Pluralist-differentiated: This category encompasses those armies in which various ethnic groups are represented beyond mere token levels, but in which personnel of different ethnic identities fulfil distinctive roles.



Pluralist-exclusivist: This category is essentially a combination of the first and second types. Although the military is multi-ethnic, certain critical groups are excluded from the armed forces.



Assimilationist (The Moderniser’s Ideal Military): In this type of military organisation, all social groups are proportionally represented throughout the hierarchy. Primary allegiance is to the organisation itself, and no reference is made to ties with any non-military class, ethnic group or region.

In a mono-ethnic military organisation, the homogeneity of ranks, officers and civilian political elite can lessen the salience of the ethnic issue, because there are so few chances for disagreement on ethnically sensitive issues between military and civilian personnel. In pluralist military organisations, military-civilian friction can also be minimised. For example, where the rank and file are ethnically dissimilar to both the officer corps and the civilian leadership, but the men in the ranks are only short term conscripts, they may feel there is little at stake in altering the ethnic symmetry between their civilian and military superiors. This has been the case in Israel, the former Soviet Union and South Africa. Especially in the armies of these three states, the enlisted ranks included a variety of ethnic groups while the officer corps was weighted heavily towards a single ethnic group: Ashkenazi Jews, Great Russians and white Afrikaners, respectively. In each instance, these were the groups controlling the central civilian bureaucratic and party machinery.

Such pluralist structures, however, are incompatible with the ideals of a representative and inclusive democracy. Furthermore, where ethnic conflict threatens the integrity of an embryonic democracy, the lasting resolution thereof will require a basic reordering of the distribution of political authority and influence. Part of this reordering entails reconstituting the security forces at the top and the bottom. As Enloe has observed, "[r]esolution of inter-ethnic conflict and state-ethnic conflict will be tenuous if the security that is achieved is merely state security and not security for each of the state’s resident communities."47

The progressive (assimilationist) pattern of change within the army of a modernising and democratising polity would be assumed to be from exclusivist to differentiated to assimilationist. It is an integrative process in which ethnicity is systematically eliminated as a criterion for recruitment and promotion, to be replaced by objective functional criteria. Such an assimilationist pattern, however, will not evolve naturally in societies where some ethnic groups possess disproportionate advantages in education or metropolitan contact, for the implementation of objective standards under such conditions may do little to widen the basis of military recruitment, particularly with regard to the officer corps and technical musterings. Objective criteria may even entrench or exacerbate existing inter-ethnic class gaps.48 Assimilationist strategies would therefore have to make provision for some sort of programme of affirmative action, which may be broadly defined as "... the deliberate policy of giving preferential treatment to some groups in a society on the grounds that they have hitherto been disadvantaged either by governmental policies or as a result of popular prejudice."49

Assimilationist thinking also assumes that ethnic group pride (such as derived from a traditional warrior role) is dysfunctional, and tends to ignore the fact that the concern of any military organisation for the territorial placement of units makes geographic bases of ethnic identity relevant to military recruitment. In this regard, assimilationist strategies may be modified to apply specifically to supra-unit levels of military organisation. This would allow for ethnically distinct units based on territorial or regional imperatives, while ensuring that formations, headquarters and staff divisions are fully integrated. Such an adaptation of assimilationist thinking would relieve intra-military ethnic tensions where they would be most likely to originate spontaneously: in the barrack rooms, where soldiers live in close proximity with a minimum of privacy while enduring the rigours of basic and functional training.

Where the regime is ethnically based, military professionals may regard pluralist recruitment as a valuable buffer between politics and the military, which reduces the likelihood of the ruling party embroiling the military in pernicious political conflicts. However, the idea of creating an ethnically balanced military force in an emergent democracy is not inherently antithetical to ethnic bases of government control over the military. For example, where the new democracy provides for representative government through a system of proportional representation, and ethnicity is a salient issue in society, voters are likely to vote along ethnic lines. The resulting government, broadly speaking, should be ethnically balanced in terms of the composition of the broader society.

Such a government would also be inclined to deviate from the Weberian model of bureaucracy, with its emphasis on functional rationality, in favour of the concept of ‘representative bureaucracy’. This concept does not ignore the importance of rationality, but recognises the importance of linkages between a state bureaucracy and the public in legitimising the state. When applied to the military, the representative concept should produce a high degree of ethnic and social similarity between the military and the governing elite.

Deliberate strategies, designed to achieve ethnic balance in the armed forces, are bound to meet with resistance from within the armed forces, especially if the military organisation inherited by the democratising regime is skewed in favour of a particular, previously dominant, class or ethnic group. Enloe has suggested that changes in the ethnic composition of the military may meet with the least resistance if they are initiated at a time when inter-ethnic hostilities have not reached the point of open conflict. In other words, ethnic manipulation of the armed forces is politically most feasible when the military does not seem crucial for the survival of the central government.50 This does not, however, imply that ethnic balance should be enforced by a sudden and dramatic purge of the old forces, but that appropriate demobilisation and recruiting strategies should be implemented as early as possible during the phase of post-conflict democratic transition.

INTERNAL COHESION AND EXTERNAL ADAPTATION

The democratic transformation which is taking place in South Africa involves more than political reform; it entails a complete break with the old political order. This necessitates the creation of entirely new civil-military relations, and is having a direct and almost ubiquitous impact on the defence force, which has historically been one of the most conservative of national institutions. Deliberate strategies for achieving civilian control over the military are most often focused at the apex of the military hierarchy, and are concerned with the interaction between civilian and military elite. This type of approach is perhaps sufficient and appropriate to a study of civil-military relations in developed nation-states with established military traditions. In emergent nations, however, military control of the military cannot be taken for granted, and must be actively promoted as an integral part of a comprehensive strategy aimed at maintaining civil supremacy over armed forces.

Whatever the role and structure emanating from a confluence of threat appraisals and recruitment strategies, it is important that the resulting armed forces exhibit a high level of internal cohesion and a willingness to comply with hierarchical demands. In other words, the politically approved defence structures must remain intact, against the disintegrative forces that are likely to be present in the developing polity.

The issues of internal cohesion and external adaptation, in the South African context, must be considered against the background of a military which is struggling to come to grips with:

accelerated attrition of skilled personnel;



coping with the dilemmas posed by eleven official languages for effective command and control;



de-coupling Christian religion from unit routine and ceremonial functions;



addressing pressures for gender-equality in an overwhelmingly male-dominated environment;



accepting cultural diversity;



dealing with the issue of gay rights;



countering pressures for collective bargaining rights for soldiers;



adapting to new, as yet ill-defined roles (such as UN peacekeeping) and concepts (such as non-offensive defence);



functioning with a steadily declining budget;



wooing the media which, by African standards, is hypercritical of government and defence;



opening previously secret domains, such as military intelligence to public scrutiny and parliamentary oversight; and



being spectator to the murder trial of two former defence chiefs and a number of other senior officers.

This is an unenviable situation for any military organisation, let alone the post-conflict military of a fledgling democracy. The armies of the United States of America and Great Britain enjoyed centuries of relative stability before they were required to grapple with the as yet unresolved problem of accommodating females in combat roles, and accepting gays in the military. Placing such issues high on the agenda of the SANDF increases the chances of ‘systems overload’ which may, at worst, lead to the disintegration rather than the integration of the nascent national force.

Africa has witnessed many examples of the phenomenon and consequences of military disintegration. There are three characteristics of military disintegration which make it perhaps the most feared of all military eventualities:

the rapid speed with which it spreads once it starts (for example, the mutiny which began in one battalion of the French Army in 1917 infected half its divisions within two months);



its apparent unpredictability: the potential for disintegration has historically been extremely difficult for military commanders or political leaders to identify; and



the total incapacity which results, perhaps even the prostration of the whole nation.51

In a new democracy, civilian control over the military is threatened where the internal cohesion of the military is weak and/or where the military is malintegrated with the external environment. Defence planners must therefore seek both strong internal cohesion and high external integration. External integration refers to links between the military and society, and implicitly to social perceptions of military legitimacy, while internal cohesion refers to links within the military.52 While much of the debate on the SANDF has been devoted to the issue of external integration, the problems of internal integration cannot be ignored, especially where the process of democratisation demands the amalgamation of diverse statutory and non-statutory armed forces within a new national military organisation. Under such circumstances, the fostering of internal cohesion cannot be taken for granted as an automatic outcome to be obtained merely by submitting the soldiery to a common disciplinary code.

Internal Integration

Internal integration must proceed from civil-military consensus on the nature and meaning of military service, a consensus which sets the scope and limits of role obligations for members at any level of the military hierarchy, and which provides the foundations of a corporate moral code for the armed forces.53 In South Africa, such consensus must be seen to emerge from the defence review process. It is then the task of military leadership to forge and sustain cohesion through individual psychological and group dynamics.

Where the nascent armed forces of a new democracy have emerged from a process of amalgamating diverse armed formations, special attention should be paid to foster cohesion at the level where members of the engaging formations are in closest proximity, for this is the level where the highest potential exists for disruptive intra-organisational conflict and division. There are clear signs of such tensions at the unit, sub-unit and sub-sub-unit level where former non-statutory force members interact with former statutory force members in the SANDF. This means that military unit formation and growth are not only matters of functional military utility, they are also the basic building-blocks of both civilian and military control over the armed forces. Defence planners at the political level should therefore encourage policies that promote effective social bonding at unit level.

There are basically three types of social bonding that occur in military units as they develop: horizontal cohesion, vertical cohesion, and commitment to unit/organisational values. Horizontal cohesion refers to the type of social bonding that develops among peers who share tasks and collective activities in a unit. In the early stages of unit formation, this type of bonding appears to be facilitated by the uncertainty and confusion experienced by recruits as they attempt to comply with unfamiliar and taxing organisational tasks and demands. At this stage, soldiers need each other’s assistance to do what is expected of them and to avoid punishment. Through mutual assistance, trust and interdependence develop, and horizontal cohesion becomes a function of the importance individuals attach to the opinions and norms of their reference group, or peers.54 Vertical cohesion refers to the type of social bonding that results from increased trust between leaders and followers. It is achieved where soldiers identify with their leaders, and leaders understand that the soldiers’ welfare is a primary leadership responsibility. Identification with leaders leads in turn to an acceptance of the organisational goals and standards that those leaders represent. The third type of social bonding is achieved when an increasing commitment to military values amounts to a social process of internalisation.55 Effective and legitimate leadership is thus a key factor in the social bonding process at unit level.

The importance of leadership legitimacy in sustaining high levels of military cohesion may best be illustrated by focusing upon the opposite, and explaining how the lack thereof contributes to military disintegration (the extreme opposite of cohesion). Military non-compliance, and ultimately disintegration, occurs when the average soldier fails to perceive the formal demands of the military hierarchy to be legitimate in terms of his own moral involvement in the system. Where organisational demands are perceived as illegitimate, the soldier simply feels no obligation to comply. Historically, soldiers’ rejection of hierarchical demands appear to be related to the following general factors:

Organisational demands may be inherently incompatible with the soldiers’ moral involvement in the system. In other words, if compliance with demands will serve the interests of neither the nation, the unit, or the primary group, or if the demands are inconsistent with the soldiers’ values and attitudes, soldiers will consider such demands illegitimate and resist them.56



The leadership may fail to communicate to its soldiers a cause that associates hierarchical demands with the soldiers’ values. Where a nation is at war and its survival at stake, the need for formal communication of a cause may be minimal. However, during peace-time or low-intensity conflict, the problem is more complex. Here military leaders must help convince the soldier that what he is doing is right, show how his specific acts contribute to the unit’s success, and how the unit’s success will contribute to the national cause.57



Soldiers may doubt the legitimacy of hierarchical demands because the leadership itself fails to comply with them and to make the sacrifices such compliance entails. If the demands of society, as conveyed through the military hierarchy, are valid for the soldier, then they should be similarly valid for the leaders themselves.58 This point is not only relevant to the danger and deprivation of battle, but also relates to general conditions of service.

Notwithstanding the imperatives for programmes of affirmative action and other measures designed to achieve ethnic balance in the armed forces of the embryonic South African democracy, the one aspect that cannot be compromised in pursuit of military cohesion and compliance (or what the draft Constitution refers to as a disciplined force), is the competence of military leaders. This means that government must be willing to allocate sufficient resources to ensure a high quality of military leadership through selection, socialisation, education and training.

External Adaptation

Within the professional military, overt politicisation is avoided and replaced by institutional socialisation in military values. However, in the process of military socialisation, politically relevant attitudes are purposefully learned, implicitly instilled, and latently internalised. For example, attitudes are fostered towards authority, power, obedience, organisation, order and hierarchy. Even a professional, apolitical military, is a powerful agent of political socialisation.

Cohen has argued that it is essential for civilian officials to realise the importance of appropriate socialisation in the early stages of a soldier’s career, for the most effective types of control involve the most fundamental assumptions about the legitimacy of the State and the role of the officer therein. These cannot be taught effectively at an advanced stage of the soldier’s career, when his attitudes have hardened. A military organisation which is already attuned to political subordination against the background of a prevailing political ideology can usually be trusted to reproduce itself in succeeding generations. However, in a new state, or one with anti-democratic traditions in the military, the content and process of organisational socialisation should be planned and guided in order to produce the desired results.59 Unfortunately, there is ample evidence of anti-democratic traditions in several of the military organisations which now form part of the SANDF.

According to Sarkesian and Gannon, the problem of reducing the dissonance between the military mind and social demands for civilian control cannot be solved by more elaborate technology, increased discipline, isolation or aloofness from society, but rather by creating an understanding of the role that the military plays in society and an appreciation of the politics of democratic systems. Military professionals must understand the political ‘rules of the game’, not only of their own institution, but of those prevailing in the broader political system.60 As Goldsworthy has observed, "... civilian control lies ultimately in the minds of the military, and the task therefore is to inculcate desired states of mind."61

According to Janowitz, civic consciousness is relevant for both short term volunteers and career personnel, for officers and enlisted men. Whether armed forces are based on conscription or an all-volunteer format, both the short term and career personnel in the service of the military are not ‘unpolitical’.62 The short term soldier in a democracy has civic rights which are subjected to specific and temporary constraints, and members of the professional military may still be defined as full citizens, except for the fact that they are expected to be non-partisan in their relations with political groupings in society. This does not mean that soldiers must be indifferent to the workings of their political system. On the contrary, they must be strongly committed to the basic assumptions of a democratic polity, and the task of civic education in the military establishment is to satisfy this requirement. In spite of this imperative, the inculcation of civic consciousness among members of the SANDF has not yet begun. There is also no comprehensive programme of civic education for demobees.

ACCOMMODATION OF LEGITIMATE MILITARY INTERESTS

It is important to recognise that no military is apolitical. Because of the resources they command and consume, the symbolic role they play, and their possible use in domestic politics, all military establishments exert political influence. The pertinent issue is not whether the armed forces should exert political influence, but how and how much. Governments are therefore well advised to grant recognition to the political influence of the military, and provide regularised channels through which this influence can be exerted, without weakening the foundations of civilian control.63

One of the basic premises of a democratic society is that various interests should be articulated and aggregated on a wide scale, with a minimum of interference from government. A democratic political system is based partially on the assumption that interest groups must have access to policy makers. Thus the military should also be granted the opportunity to argue its case within the accepted rules of the game. Within these parameters, the political role of the military professional should be mainly consultative. This requires the recognition of an active, responsible self-interest, as well as non-partisan involvement in the policy process in particular, and politics in general.64

According to Deutsch, "one of the fundamental truths about politics is that much of it occurs in the pursuit of the interests of particular individuals or groups."65 The military, in so far as it becomes involved in politics, is no exception in this regard. The perception of officers that their welfare is satisfactorily maintained is likely to determine whether the military will continue to support a transition to democracy. This is especially relevant where officers have not had sufficient time and positive experiences to enable them to develop an inherent belief in the value and virtues of a democratic form of government.66

Civilian control, especially in heterogeneous societies, is enhanced through the allocation of resources in such a way that the beliefs of officers can be manipulated to the point where their psychological needs harmonise with those of the broader political system.67 In an effort to reduce civil-military tensions, governments may attempt to maximise the material satisfaction of the military through some form of pay-off. According to Cox, "elementary notions of reciprocity could be called into play whereby officers might agree not to intervene so long as certain ‘rewards’ were forthcoming from the civilian sector."68 Such reciprocity need not take the form of blatant bribery, but may be as subtle as civilian approval of the allocation of a very high proportion of the defence budget to remuneration and benefits, rather than to hardware, and the provision of various other perquisites and privileges by way of state patronage. Where such strategies are employed, the danger exists that pay-offs for the senior ranks could increase discontent among the middle and lower ranks, the breeding ground for many past coup actions.69

Furthermore, because military ‘interests’ are extremely difficult to define, there is a tendency to define them solely in economic terms. However, effective government control of the military demands the recognition of other types of military interests, such as prestige, status, opportunities for professional accomplishment and advancement, and conditions of service. Civilian control cannot be achieved simply through ‘pay-offs’ which may whet the appetite of the military rather than appease it. Governments which have succeeded in channelling the political ambitions of the military have done so through sensitive balancing of economic self-interest, professionalisation, selective use of promotions, and symbolic recognition of the importance of the military.70

Civil-military conflict over resource allocation typically centres around three general types of military grievance:

dissatisfaction over pay, promotions, appointments, assignments, and/or retirement policies;

dissatisfaction over budget allocations, training facilities, and/or inter-service favouritism; and

dissatisfaction over general military policy and/or civilian support for military operations.

With reference to the Mexican military, Margiotta has observed that the military need not receive an inordinate share of government resources, but that limited resources can be skilfully managed to provide economic incentives to political loyalty. Spending the lion’s share of the defence budget upon pay and benefits rather than military hardware may elicit allegations of government pandering to the military and its wishes. However, in a developing state, where a subordinate political role for the military has not been circumscribed by long tradition, considerate treatment of the military provides at least a partial disincentive to military intervention.71

Where budgetary restrictions necessitate some form of inter-service favouritism, it should be kept in mind that the army is the most politically dangerous arm of service in a developing nation. The national prestige which is derived from a strong air force or navy should be carefully balanced against the need to nurture democracy, which in the infant stages at least, also implies nurturing a politically subservient army. The minimum budgetary support for other arms of service, from a civil-military relations point of view, is that which is necessary for these arms to support the army during training and operations. Ideally, however, governments should strive to promote the legitimate interests of the armed forces as a whole.

Just as the military has a responsibility to protect society, society, through its government, has an obligation to uphold the dignity, integrity and esteem of its armed forces. This is not only a prerequisite for combat effectiveness, but also for stable civil-military relations. The recognition of mutual obligations and mutual respect between armed forces and a democratic society is the foundation upon which stable civil-military relations must rest. Furthermore, because all professions jealously guard their corporate autonomy, it is advisable for government to grant the military a sufficient measure of organisational autonomy. However, military autonomy must not be interpreted so widely as to preclude effective civilian control exercised through the formal institutions of government. What is advocated under autonomy is civilian recognition of and respect for the fact that the military is an organisation of national scope, which should not be subordinated to the interests of any particularistic social force, such as a specific social class, ethnic group or political party.72

It may be difficult to convince the government and people of a country which has recently shrugged off the yoke of hegemony that the survival of democracy may depend upon the recognition of military interests, or that military interests should be afforded preference among a host of competing interests in the embryonic democracy. However, such efforts are likely to be politically rewarding in the long run, for the longer the period of uninterrupted civilian control the more likely the military will "internalize the belief that their subordination is appropriate and should not be lightly set aside", and that civilian institutions "can better exercise control, their members having gained experience and expertise."73

CONCLUSION

In South Africa, demobilisation and remobilisation issues can obviously not be viewed in isolation. Remobilisation will affect the nature and scope of demobilisation, and the challenges of reintegration should affect both. Both demobilisation and remobilisation will impact upon the longer term security and stability of the country, and thus on its ability to sustain democratic development. The peace and democratisation process is not irreversible, nor is it robust enough for government and responsible citizens to ignore the more obvious obstacles in the path of sustainable peace and security.

This article has attempted to highlight a number of issues pertaining to the demobilisation and remobilisation of armed forces in South Africa, while also pointing to some of the problems and challenges of those former combatants who are, or will soon be made militarily redundant. It is neither an exhaustive survey of issues surrounding the demilitarisation of South African society, nor a blueprint for demobilisation, remobilisation and reintegration. However, the issues which have been raised should serve to illustrate the need for a comprehensive DRP in South Africa. In fact, the framework for such a programme should ideally have been in place before 27 April 1994. Perhaps a ‘trial-and-error’ approach was unavoidable, given the manoeuvring for the acquisition or retention of political power of the various parties at the multiparty negotiating forum. It remains inconceivable, however, that those serving in South Africa’s defence force and those former combatants who have not or will not find a home within the remobilised military, must be left to haemorrhage in a sea of uncertainty and incongruence. It is also remarkable that a society which has suffered from the effects of militarism is relatively unconcerned with the prospect of a perhaps more barbaric remilitarisation of society through uncontrolled and unenlightened remobilisation.

Although certain mistakes have undoubtedly been made in the past two years, it should be remembered that the DRP process will continue for another three years, and that the consequences of this process will be felt for many more, both by former soldiers, serving soldiers and civilian communities. Defence planners need, as a matter of urgency, to address issues such as those raised in this article, not in an ad hoc fashion, but within a comprehensive conceptual framework for a DRP in South Africa. The advantage of developing such a framework, even at this late stage, is that all actors involved would know what to expect down the line. This reduces the chances of spontaneous eruptions by disaffected soldiers and former combatants, and reduces both expectations and unwarranted trepidation caused by unnecessary uncertainty and speculation.

This article is published as part of the Training for Peace Project, a joint venture between the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs (NUPI), the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes (ACCORD), and the Institute for Defence Policy (IDP).



J Cilliers, Peace Support Operations, in J Cilliers & G Mills (eds.), Peacekeeping in Africa, IDP/SAIIA, Halfway House, 1995.



British Army, Wider Peacekeeping, HMSO, London, 1995, pp. 3-8.



Ibid., pp. 3-9.



Norman Chandler, SANDF Rationalisation Moves Will Mean Retrenchments, The Star, 9 April 1996.



See, for example, J Cilliers, Demobilisation and Integration of Armed Forces, submission to the Technical Committee on the TEC, 2 August 1993; J Cilliers, Demobilisation, Integration and the Sub-Council on Defence, submission to the Technical Committee on Violence and the Technical Committee on the TEC, 27 June 1993; J Cilliers, Demobilisation and Integration of Armed Forces, Submission to the Goldstone Commission, 10 August 1993.



T Motumi & A Hudson, Rightsizing: The challenges of Demobilisation and Social Reintegration in South Africa, in J Cilliers (ed.), Dismissed: Demobilisation and Reintegration of Former Combatants in Africa, IDP, Halfway House, 1996.



Ibid., p. 117.



Anon, 15 000 MKs still to be called up, The Citizen, 13 September 1995.



SANDF Internal Communication Bulletin, 27/96.



SANDF Internal Communication Bulletin, 83/95.



SANDF Internal Communication Bulletin, Demobilisation Programme, 87, 4 September 1995.



SANDF, The Flexible Permanent Force Service System, 13 March 1996, 22/96.



In conventional usage, DRP has come to be recognised as an acronym for Demobilisation and Reintegration Programmes. In this article, however, it is used to refer to the idea of a ‘Demobilisation and Remobilisation Programme’. Implicit to this new useage of DRP is the fact that the reintegration of former combatants into civil society must form an integral part of any planned programme of demobilization. By extending the concept of DRP it is hoped to provide a more comprehensive framework for analysing the military dimensions of post-conflict peacebuilding in South Africa.



WPSass, Optimising the Future South African Part-Time Forces Organisation, in J Cilliers & WPSass (eds.), Get on Parade: Restrucuring South Africa’s Part-Time Military Force for the 21st Century, IDP Monograph Series, 1, 1996, pp. 16 & 17.



Ibid., p. 15.



SANDF Communications Bulletin, 83/95.



Ibid.



SANDF Communications Bulletin, 32/96.



J Cock, The Cultural and Social Challenge of Demilitarisation, paper presented at the Seminar on Defensive Restructuring in Southern Africa, Johannesburg, 2 March 1996, p. 11.



R Makings, Top SAAF Pilots Can Earn More by Selling Vacuum Cleaners, Sunday Times, 24 March 1996.



According to Peter De Ionno, in an article entitled From bomb plant to jobs centre, Sunday Times, 31 March 1996, the SANDF was awaiting cabinet approval for R123 million to fund the first year of vocational training for some 3 500 former non-statutory force members and SANDF members whose two-year contracts were not being renewed.



G L Meiring, Taking the SA Army into the Future, African Defence Review, 3(14), January 1994, p. 6.



Ibid.



SANDF, Annual Report of the National Defence Force, 1994/1995, 1995, p. 57.



Motumi & Hudson, op. cit., p. 123.



Anon, R158-m for training of former MK’s, APLA’s, The Citizen, 3 April 1996.



J Cock, The Social Integration of Demobilised Soldiers in Contemporary South Africa, African Defence Review, 2(12), 1993.



Motumi & Hudson, op. cit., p. 122.



Ibid., pp. 125-126.



Ibid., p. 124.



L Jossel & R Maguire, Ready to Govern: An Introduction to the ANC’s Policy Guidelines, African National Congress, Johannesburg, 1993, p. 33.



FTOlivier & G Teitler, Democracy and the Armed Forces: The Dutch Experiment, in G HArries-Jenkins (ed.), Armed Forces and the Welfare Societies: Challenges in the 1980s, Macmillan, London, 1982, p. 75.



CEWelch, Civilian Control of the Military: Theory and Cases From Developing Countries, State University of New York Press, Albany, 1976, p. 321.



C Enloe, Police, Military and Ethnicity: Foundations of State Power, Transaction Books, New Brunswick, 1980, p. 54.



J C T Downey, Management in the Armed Forces : An Anatomy of the Military Profession, McGraw-Hill,London, 1977, p. 172.



NAMilgram, Personality Factors in Military Psychology, in R Gal & ADMangelsdorff (eds.), Handbook of Military Psychology, John Wiley & Sons, New York, 1991, p. 563.



Ibid.



SADepartment of Defence, Defence White Paper, 1996, Chapter 6, par. 33.



CHEnloe, Civilian Control of the Military: Implications in the Plural Societies of Guyana and Malaysia, in Welch, op. cit., p. 69.



Enloe, op. cit., p. 32.



Ibid., pp. 38-39.



C E Welch & A Smith, Military Role and Rule, Duxbury Press, North Scituate, Mass., 1977, p. 15.



Enloe, 1976, op. cit., p. 94.



Enloe, 1980, op. cit., pp. 141-142.



Ibid., pp. 32-33.



Ibid., p.153.



Ibid., p. 33.



D Robertson, A Dictionary of Modern Politics, Europa Publications, London, 1993, p. 3.



Enloe, 1980, op. cit., p. 147.



SDWesbrook, The Potential for Military Disintegration, in S Sarkesian (ed.), Combat Effectiveness: Cohesion, Stress and the Volunteer Military, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1980, p. 245.



CACotton, The Institutional Organizational Model and the Military, in CCMoskos & FR Wood (eds.), The Military: More Than Just a Job?, Pergamon Brassey’s, Washington, 1988, p. 48.



Ibid., p. 52.



PTBartone & FRKirkland, Optimal Leadership in Small Army Units, in Gal & Mangelsdorff, op. cit., p. 396.



Ibid.



Wesbrook, op. cit., p. 261.



Ibid., pp. 261-262.



Ibid.



SPCohen, Civilian Control of the Military in India, in Welch, op. cit., p. 57.



SCSarkesian & TMGannon, Professionalism: Problems and Challenges, in MMWakin (ed.), War, Morality and the Military Profession, Westview Press, Boulder, Col., 1979, pp. 129-130.



D Goldsworthy, Civilian Control of the Military in Black Africa, African Affairs, 80(318), 1981, p. 53.



M Janowitz & SDWesbrook (eds.), The Political Education of Soldiers, Sage, Beverly Hills, 1983, p. 73.



Welch, op. cit., p. 247.



MMWakin, The Ethics of Leadership II, in Wakin, op. cit., pp. 133-134.



KWDeutsch, Politics and Government: How People Decide Their Fate, Houghton-Mifflin, Boston, 1980, p. 10.



R Arnett, Russia After the Crisis: Can Civilians Control the Military?, Orbis, 38(1), 1994, p. 52.



Cohen, op. cit., pp. 56-57.



TSCox, Civil-Military Relations in Sierra Leone: A Case Study of African Soldiers in Politics, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1976, p. 19.



Goldsworthy, op. cit., pp. 60-61.



Welch, op. cit., p. 246.



FDMargiotta, Civilian Control and the Mexican Military: Changing Patterns of Political Influence, in Welch, op. cit., pp. 222-228 & 247-248.



Welch & Smith, op. cit., p. 41.



Welch, 1976, op. cit., p. 27.